


Whiter Shade of Pale

by jenna_thorn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Postpartum Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-26
Updated: 2007-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:17:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenna_thorn/pseuds/jenna_thorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a case file - roses grow<br/>Warning: It's a ghost story. <br/>potential trigger - Post Partum Depression</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiter Shade of Pale

The house was finally, finally quiet. The clatter of after-dinner washing had given way to slamming of doors and his voice, raised in the frustration she couldn't let herself share. His shouting faded more quickly than her murmured answers: No, she couldn't make the baby be quiet; no, she didn't know what he wanted; yes, she did want him to get his client presentation done; no, there wasn't any peace, not with a 5 week old child in the house. But at half past midnight, the nursery was silent save for the endless low crackle of the monitor. His mother slept in the rocking chair, yesterday's attempt at mascara rubbed into her hairline, her breathing lost in the gentle hum of central air. Upstairs, the cycling whirr of the desktop was a slowed counterpoint to the final heartbeats of the man who curled over the keyboard, his sightless eyes drying as his email notification chimed in vain.

\---:::---

Dean cranked the volume knob back up. "I'm not seeing how a real estate agent's repeating commission is our problem."

Sam batted Dean's hand away from the dash and jabbed the eject button impatiently, "Twelve deaths in twenty years? That we know of."

"It can't be a ghost causing it. They've bulldozed the house."

"And rebuilt on the property. Dean, it's killing people."

"The agent said it's a _gas_ leak." He grabbed the nearest cassette and shoved it in.

"What kind of gas leak kills adult men and doesn't affect infants?"

"Only adult men eat the chili in Texas."

"Did you just make a fart joke?"

"Pull my finger."

"Shut up and drive. Highway 114. Exit's in a quarter mile."

"As if, little brother," but Dean cranked the volume knob up and slid the Impala into the far right lane.

 

_He'd bought her the puppy on the way home from the doctor and for the next nine months, it grew faster than her belly, the only thing in the world that did. _

 

"Jesus, did they pick this color because it makes *everyone* look weird? You turned orange, man."

"I'll be sure to pass on your fashion critique to the people we stole the jackets from, Dean."

"Polyester. Who wears polyester?" Dean picked at the lapel.

The door opened and Sam stepped forward with a smile. "Hi, you must be Mrs. Smith. I'm Pete Downing; this is my partner Doug. We're here about the house."

 

_ She picked the rose bushes randomly, no regard to color or bloom, but she was careful to purchase only the hybrids that were supposed to be heat resistant. He'd allotted her a certain budget, and the puppy's food was already coming out of that. She didn't want to have to replace anything that died, and she'd heard about the summers here._

 

"I found her, Dean."

"Her?"

"Her. Them. Her."

"Rock salt and gasoline, or something complicated?"

"Suicide after SIDS. Ghost is a good bet. Lemme find where she's buried."

"You couldn't do that before waking me up?" Dean pulled the pillow over his head, then spun it across the room in retaliation for the notebook Sam slung at him.

 

_ The puppy helped her dig, which had seemed such fun in the garden, but now was a problem. She scrubbed at the clear imprint of two muddy paws on the front of her maternity dress. Her husband frowned at the stain then at the dog curled up between her feet and wondered aloud if he'd made a mistake. He was right, as he always was; she knew she'd be busy with the baby but she promised him that she'd have time for the dog, too. He wouldn't have to walk him in the evenings or anything. She wouldn't ask him for help, not a bit._

 

They sat in the Impala in the parking lot of a retail strip with the neon of the CiCi's Pizza sign behind them masking the glow of Sam's laptop, watching through ornate wrought iron fencing as the rent-a-cop drove slowly through Forest Park.

"You know, Sam, for a supposed man, you know a hell of a lot about baby blues."

"It's Post Partum Depression, not baby blues, asshole."

"Baby blues. There something I should know about? You planning on getting knocked up?"

"How can you watch the news and *not* know anything? Even the tabloids..."

Dean mimed flipping flimsy newsprint pages, "Celebrity bullshit, celebrity bullshit, haunted house, Elvis sighting, celebrity bullshit."

"If only Tom Cruise had the same level of apathy."

"What's he got to do wi ...you know what? Never mind. I don't care."

"My point."

Dean popped the trunk. Jumping the fence was easier than finding a gate and they found the graves easily enough, forty years of weather not enough to dull the carved edges of pink granite of a single headstone for mother and child with a conspicuously empty space to the left making the whole thing look lopsided.

"The husband must be alive, still."

"Or he remarried and is somewhere completely not here. Somewhere without polyester blazers in August in a hundred degrees."

"Yeah, I suppose," Sam said.

The soil was hard, clay laden and heavy as ground brick, but they'd grown used to it, the labor, the stench of gasoline, the flicker of the match making Dean look hard, supernatural himself, before he dropped it. They broke open both coffins at once, because they were too closely spaced to dig them separately, but the infant wouldn't light. Dean tipped the jerry can over and let the rest, a full third of the five gallon can, soak the ground. A second scatter of salt and another match and it was done. They shook off the dirt and darted across the street back to the Impala to toss the shovels into the trunk.

"And in the morning, Texas in our rear view mirror," Dean grinned.

"Let's just make sure."

 

_He hated that she let the dog sleep at the foot of the bed, but now that he was working such long hours and the company was even making him travel on weekends, it was good to have another body in the house. She could lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, sleepless and gassy, feeling the baby move and hearing the puppy breathe. It made her feel less alone. _

 

 

"We should have done this from the beginning," Dean muttered. "Hell of a lot more comfortable than those ugly blazers."

"Says the man who breaks out in hives at the idea of wearing a tie," Sam shot back. He shrugged the grey coverall over his shoulders. Darn thing was too small and gave him a wedgie if he didn't slouch. He used the trunk as cover to shake his boxers out of his butt before slinging the smaller canvas bag over his shoulder and he had to jog to catch up with Dean on the porch of a neighboring house as the door opened.

"Hi, we're with TXU. We are just here for a follow up about the gas line."

"Oh goodness sakes, come in, come in. I'm so glad you fixed it. When I think that I've been living here for forty years and that was next door all the time. You know, I watch the news on my television."

Sam grinned and deliberately gave her an opening. "Forty years, I bet you could tell us all about the folks who've come in and out of your neighborhood."

"Not that I'm some sort of nosy parker, young man, but yes, I certainly could."

"Sam." Dean motioned Sam over to the window, leaning over the back of a vintage sofa, its upholstery covered in clear plastic. He held the EMF against the window, aimed toward the brick clad faux Tudor crowding the shared fence. The sound was turned off, but half the lights were lit. "I think we need to hear those stories."

 

_Her mother had told her about nesting in the long distance call they'd had in lieu of a baby shower, but she hadn't believed it; now she was starting to reconsider. She was on the third color in the nursery, having decided halfway through painting the baseboards that the stripes were garish, then, after taping and repainting, that the yellow was too bright. A soft purple, that would do nicely. With yellow ducks. She'd gotten two of them painted before the baby came. _

_She came home from the hospital to dirty dishes in the sink. The paint cans she'd left in the nursery were crusted over with dried paint, the brushes still sticking out of them, unsalvageable._

 

"The original house was built when mine was, just after the war, you know, and in the eighties those Walker people, he did something with computers, they tore it right down to the ground and made it into a zero lot. A shame too, since there had been two of those white flowering trees in the back, very pretty. Not like the pear trees that had been there before. Fruiting trees are all well and good if you take care of them, mind, but not if you let the fruit just fall to the ground and rot. Waste of fruit, if you ask me, and besides it draws flies and bees like you wouldn't believe. Then the internet dot thing happened and oh, we had a whole clearing out of people then, for sale signs coming up all up and down this street. I can bake cookies. My daughter brings them. Not real cookies, but those break apart ones. Nothing wrong with cheating here and there to save a little wear and tear on old hands, and they're almost as good as made. Would you boys like a cookie?"

 

Dean looked up hopefully, but Sam demurred, "Ma'am, we are really here to do our job."

 

"Oh, I know that, but a cookie won't hurt, now will it?" She leaned conspiratorially into Dean, perched on the edge of the sofa, plastic crinkling.

 

Dean poked the rest of the "won't hurt" tuna-fish sandwich into his mouth and finished his lemonade, licking undissolved sugar from his lip. "Actually, Mrs. Duncan, maybe you could show me where the old trees used to be. Maybe the roots are still in the ground and causing our readings."

 

"Oh, I can just point over the fence. But I'll just put the cookies in to bake first. We have to walk through the kitchen anyway, don't we?"

 

_ She didn't watch him, though she couldn't argue. If he said the dog had parvo, then he did, and he was right, they couldn't expose the baby to sickness and he was her husband, surely he wouldn't lie to her. So she asked him to wrap the puppy when he was done and he did, out of kindness, before he went off to a client dinner in his new suit and that cologne she liked so much. She buried the puppy in the back yard, covering the old towel her husband had used with one of the baby quilts, red balloons on white, digging with her bare hands, the baby swaddled next to her, cooing into the grass. _

 

"Such new-fangled instruments but you still need a little memory, eh? Sometimes the old ways are better. Though I don't know, when my daughter got the city sewer laid in, they just ripped up the whole backyard, made her move the kids' swingset and everything. Big muddy mess back there for weeks. I guess I like your ways better, your little beepy thing. I told her she needed to take advantage of that mess, plant something back there, but they wouldn't let her, talking about access and so on."

 

"There's not much of a yard next door now, but there used to be. Those damn pears, four of them, and then that unfortunate business with the Millers. She planted roses all over. All colors, pink and yellow and white, no rhyme or reason, just roses. Had that back yard all dug up, and then they got a puppy, and he'd go out there and dig with her, both of 'em like kids, rolling in the mud. Then the puppy died and the baby died and she, well, you know, she killed herself. After the baby's funeral. And her husband just up and moved away. Sold the house to a couple from up north somewhere and they spent weeks pulling up all those roses, even the ones she'd planted on that dog's grave. That one is the only one that came back. Some of the climbing roses do that. Hard to kill, roses can be. Unless you try to keep them alive, then they get black spot and die on you."

 

_ The stretchmarks looked like scratches and she understood why he turned away, couldn't touch her. She tried, tried to make herself beautiful, tried to make the house beautiful, but she could feel the pale lines under her clothes, the deflated balloon that was her stomach. The ache in her breasts when the baby cried to nurse was a surprise every time. He needed his sleep, so she started taking the baby outside, careful to cover him, to nurse in the back, the fence for modesty and the rose growing from the puppy's grave for company. _

 

Dean waved a cookie in goodbye as they crossed the street, then shoved it into his mouth to have a hand free for the keys. Sam said, "Looks like we pull out the yellow blazers again," and at Dean's muffled assent, continued, "I could say anything I wanted to and you can't answer without spraying chocolate chips all over the dash." Dean flipped him off and started the car. Sam reached for the tape deck. Dean smacked him harder than was strictly necessary.

 

_ She stood stirring the sauce, too spicy for her, but she'd learned to suit his tastes instead, watching the spatter of red against the pot, against the wooden spoon, onto the gleaming white enamel of the stovetop. The dismay on his face confused her, before she realized she was crying again. _

 

"No problem ma'am, we just wanted to look at the back of the pool; we can let ourselves out the back gate. We don't want to make you late. You go right ahead." Sam waved from the side of the house.

"You finished romancing the MILF?"

"I wonder how much storage space one of those SUVs has."

"Do you really want to start this when I'm being attacked by a triffid and wearing a tie?"

Sam came around the corner to join Dean. He toed the second shovel up. "I'm just saying, I bet the gas mileage is a hell of a lot better than we've been getting in the..."

"Finish that sentence and I'll let you do this alone, jackass. You can sweat out here and I'll be sitting next door with homemade lemonade under the window unit." Apparently Sam's snicker didn't technically count as finishing. Only a few feet down, though, the tip of the shovel brought up a tangle of fibers, matted and dirt-grey with splotches of bright red. "Hold up, Sam. We're done."

 

The flame reached out of the hole at their feet to curl the leaves of the rose above it. Dean pulled a partial bloom to the side out of the heat and rolled the stem between his fingertips, wary of thorns. "You know, Mrs. Duncan had a vase in her kitchen," he said quietly.

"You are joking."

"Course I am." Dean let go of the vine and picked up the shovel and gas can.

"You ate all the cookies she baked anyway."

"Shut up."

"Maybe she could make chili."

"Shut the fuck up, Sammy," Dean snarled as he toed the clay off his shovel and stalked around the house toward the street.

 

Sam chuckled as he kicked the last of the dirt back into the hole under the rose. The ac unit next door whirred to life as he walked past. Dean was sitting the Impala with the air conditioner running full blast, digging at the dirt under his fingernails. Sam slid into the passenger seat and took advantage of Dean's preoccupation with adjusting the rear view mirror to replace Metallica with AC/DC, just for a change.

 

Dean twisted the volume higher and they drove away.

**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to Beadslut, koyote19, and CdrNemo for beta and guidance.


End file.
